How many Yankees? Poe wondered. He turned back in the direction of his tent. Sextus was nowhere to be seen. "Bring a chair, you blasted orangutan!" he shouted. He had no idea whether or not Sextus heard him.
More popping sounds came from the woods--individual shots this time. >From a different part of the line, Poe thought.
"Byrons can only die," he said. Moses looked at him in surprise. "We real poets, we're all too in love with death. Whitman writes about life, even the obscene parts of it, and that's why he will win. Why," he took a breath, trying to make himself clearer, "why the North will win."
Moses seemed to be struggling to understand this. "Sir," he said. "Sir, I don't understand."
More crackling from the woods. Poe's head moved left and right, trying to find where it was coming from. A savage exultation beat a long tattoo in his heart. He was right, he was right, he was right again. He stepped up to Moses, stared into his eyes at a few inches' range.
"Do you hear guns from the west, Major?" he demanded. "Do you hear anything at all from Lee's offensive?"
"Why--" Major Moses stopped dead, licked his lips. There was pure bewilderment in his eyes. "Why are you doing this? Why are you fighting for the Cause?"
"I hate Whitman!" Poe shrieked. "I hate him, and I hate steam engines, I hate ironclad ships and repeating rifles and rifled artillery!"
"Your chair, Massa Poe," said Sextus.
A cacophony of sound was coming from the woods now, regular platoon volleys, one after another. The sound battered Poe's ears.
"I fight for the South because we are right, Major Moses!" Poe shouted. "I believe it--I have proved it rationally--we are superior, sir! The South fights for the right of one man to be superior to another, because he is superior, because he knows he is superior."
"Here's your chair, Massa Poe," said Sextus.
"Superior in mind, superior in cognitive faculty, superior in erudition! Superior in knowledge, in training, in sagacity! In appreciation of beauty, of form, of moral sense!" Poe pointed his stick at the woods. "Those Yankees--they are democracy, sir! Dragging even poetry into the muck! Walter Whitman addresses his verses to women of the street--that is democracy for you! Those Yankee soldiers, they are Whitmans with bayonets! I fight them because I must, because someone must fight for what is noble and eternal, even if only to die, like Byron, in some pointless--pointless--"
)
The fate of Edgar Allan Poe is swept up from the Baltimore gutter to live on through sobriety and a dwindling literary career when the Civil War gives him a chance to engage the North in his own conflict of ideals--as a Confederate General.
